SIR,—I sympathise with much that Pharos says on the 'nigger-hunting'
sentences. It follows the en- lightened line he (and you, sir) have advocated for so long. But in this instance he fails to appreciate two considerations.
Firstly, no analogy can be drawn between the Notting Hill thuggery and the violence our courts usually encounter. xenophobia is an abandonment of reason; its practice is indiscriminate. This cannot be said of other crimes, however brutal. Fascism and its dupes, by clothing the devil with the beast, have produced a new sort of hellishness.
Secondly, although reason has been usurped, re- sponsibility continues. Doubtless the homes and backgrounds of the nine gangsters would, if known to us, invite our pity on them. But the judge treated them as being morally responsible, which is in a sense a high compliment. He was prepared to recog- nise them as persons, not as automata or fodder for criminal statistics. The apparent severity of the sentence follows from what was a humane assess- ment of the accused.
There is, of course, our corporate responsibility for the ethos which promotes such horrible acts. We should not suppose that four years imprisonment on nine teenagers will exonerate us from past sins of
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